The Dual Nature of Space
by Shieldmaiden Sigyn
Summary: Ben Solo reflects on becoming who and what he has become. (Could become more...we shall see...Lemme know!)
1. Chapter 1

The vastness of space is a wonder. The cold black has a way of sucking the truth out of anyone. Like a cleansing fire, the void burns to the center of your soul and tears away the layers of camouflaged lies laid upon you like armor. Without the constructed walls of excuses and reasons, you see your own heart in a way that you've never known. Gone with the atmosphere are the previously validated excuses of bloodlines and poorly aimed blame at parentage. Alone with the silence, you have no choice but to confront your reality.

Kneeling on the floor in his room, Ben Solo is beginning to confront the reality of Kylo Ren. Completely alone, he is able to admit to his own heart that this is not where his path was truly meant to lead. He had been searching for a place to belong. Too light to belong to Snoke, too dark to belong truly with his family. He had thrown balance to the wind and listened to what he believed was his grandfather speaking to him. He had burned his whole life down and molded the ashes into something akin to a fragile sandcastle of lies and pretending. He was sure that the truth was coming. So many times, his loyalty to the dark had been tested. And each time, he had pretended to give himself fully to the yawning maw of the dark. He had murdered a whole village recently, simply to prove that he was fully committed. But the screams still echoed in his ears, the reverberation through the Force felt like it was splitting his bones in half. Deep inside he knew he didn't belong here, he knew he was a boy pretending at darkness and he knew that it was only a matter of time before he was found out. He shuddered inside at the death he knew would be dealt to him.

Suddenly unable to breathe, Ben removes the mask over his face and throws it across the room. Indulging in a gulp of air, Ben folds his hands over his face and screams silently. The bridges he had burned, the life he had burned, guaranteed that if he could get out of the reach of the First Order, the Resistance would be hot on his tail. To any logical creature, death could be the only foreseen outcome. But a creature facing its own demise is anything but logical. Bens dreams were filled with memories of before his leap, before his apparent corruption. Days spent in the sun, nights filled with laughter, before the dark voice started whispering from the corners. Before Uncle Luke started noticing little things, a glance, aggression, lies and cover ups. But Luke hadn't said anything to anyone, hoping that he was not seeing what he was seeing. Hoping that the boy could fight it on his own as Luke himself had done and become stronger for it. He hadn't seen the desperation in Bens eyes, the struggle within his soul. But everyone had watched him fall from the light, heaving himself into his own personal hell.

The perceived failings of his family fed into the anger that fueled his fall to the dark. His mothers inability to spend time with her family because her political leanings prevented her from it. His fathers inability to be a role model, and his uncles blindness to his plight made him feel that no one cared for him. It made it all too easy to let it all go and embrace his grandfathers unfulfilled legacy. He knows in his soul that is isn't his parents fault or his uncles, but his own weakness that he left unaddressed for far too long. Something in him latched on to Darth Vaders broken story and he followed it too far down the rabbit hole and now he didn't know how to get home. He was suddenly scared and truly feeling lone for the first time in a long, long time.

A comm link beeped and forced him to retreat from his reverie. "Master Ren, we are approaching Takodana. We are expecting Resistance forces presently." a voice spoke crisply and Ben shook the remainder of the thoughts from his head and slapped his mask back onto his face.

"Understood, proceed and I will be with you momentarily." Kylo Ren replied into the internal comm unit and raised himself from the kneeling position he had been in. He clipped his lightsaber back onto his belt and straightened his robes. Soon, he would disembark and kill more people, in order to prove his loyalty and prolong his life another day. The target was the BB-8 droid that had eluded them to this point, running away with a girl and a failed stormtrooper. The droid had a piece of the map that lead to Luke Skywalker. Only a few more bridges to burn before maybe he would wake up and really be Kylo Ren and not Ben Solo any more. If he burned his entire life down and stomped on the ashes, maybe he would really be as dark and powerful as his grandfather, maybe he would live up to Snokes hopes for him. Maybe one morning, the screams would empower him instead of crippling him.

As he left the room and headed towards the rest of the invasion force, he thought that maybe if he killed everything in him that was light, everyone in him that was light, then he would truly be able to give himself to the dark and not so afraid. Kylo smiled under the mask and chuckled darkly. Only three more "bridges" to burn.


	2. Chapter 2

**_A/N: Thanks to all of you who have reviewed, followed, and such! I suppose I forgot in the first chapter that I don't own anything Star Wars, I just use their ideas and allow the plot bunnies to have a party with liquor...guess they need to chill. Anyways! Second chapter so shortly after the first! I know! Its a thank you for reviews and such! I don't really know where I am heading with this yet, but I don't want it to be typical Reylo...I want to explore their heads for a while. I want to know what they are thinking! I think you do too, because you're still here! So maybe I have taken a little artistic license with the story, but I promise you I will make it worthwhile if you stick with me! Much love and hugs! Maybe chapter three when I wake up? Leave me some love and motivate me! Thank you so much as always, Jessa._**

The last week had been hell. Pure and absolute hell. Taken from the routine and surroundings she had always known and thrown into a fight that was never hers, she was drowning. Yet a strange buoyancy carried her through, a lightness in her chest that said that it was all going to be just fine. As things stood, she had no choice but to agree and follow along as her life changed so rapidly that it left her astounded. Just seven days ago, she stood in a market on Jakku, blissfully alone and able to care for herself...to a point. Well, the point was that she was surviving alone. Then came the droid and the first inkling that something was about to change. The story BB-8 had told her was too wild to be believed and she figured it was malfunctioning. However, in short order, she ran into Finn, an outsider also looking for the droid. Finn's story was just as strange and the feeling in her chest continued to grow, almost like a compass pointing her way. They had stolen the Millennium Falcon, run away and been caught by none other than Han Solo who had picked up the ships signal shortly after they had left Jakku. Things were just too strange to be ignored.

Now she stood in the middle of a verdant forest, the color she had never believed existed. She had been running. Something she did well and often, but this time she was running on pure adrenaline. She had found people who she had begun to consider friends, even closer, family. But what she had just witnessed in a box in a basement, when she touched a lightsaber, was enough to make her run fast and far, leaving everything and everyone behind. Voices and images had flooded her mind, along with a tidal wave of emotions. Something Maz had called 'the Force', the very same Force that she remembered from her bedtime stories long, long ago. Stories she had grown up with, but they were just stories, weren't they? They had nothing to do with her! She wanted nothing to do with them! People in those stories died, sacrificed and gave up all for the sake of the Force, for good. She did not consider herself good or evil, merely neutral and she knew she wanted nothing to do with what she had seen when she touched the cool metal of the saber. But the compass in her chest was pointing backwards to Finn, Han and Chewie.

Rey paused against a tree limb to catch her breath and she heard the whirring of internal servos and the beeping she had come to recognize as BB-8. "Seriously? You need to go back! Han can take you where you need to be! You don't need me to be there! GO!" she yelled at the spherical droid as it came into view. A few beeps and a raspberry later and she rolled her eyes. "Listen, you need Han. He is going to take you to the Resistance and that's where you belong. I don't matter..." she mumbled, sitting down on the log she had been leaning on, sweat trickling down the back of her neck. Seconds later, blaster fire from the direction she had just come from startled from her self pity. BB-8 trilled a warning and rocked back and forth in place. "Run, BB, go! I will draw them off my way! Go back to Han and Finn!" she cried and started running again, pulling Hans borrowed blaster from her pocket.

Dodging branches and fallen logs, Rey sprinted as fast as she could, her compass now pointing forwards, away from Han and Finn. Her breath came from her lips is anguished gasps and pants as her legs pounded downwards into the dirt, propelling her forwards as fast as they could. Adrenaline coursed through her veins now more than ever before and it spurred her onward through a blur of green and brown. The mechanized voices of the stormtroopers sounded closer than before and Rey realized that she had been following her compass instead of her brain. She paused for a moment near to some tall boulders, trying to assess her situation and calm herself. The voices came nearer and she knew she would have to kill to make it out alive. She trusted her instincts and waited in the cover of the rocks till she had a clear shot at the three moving in towards her. Five shots was all it took for her inept, shaking hands to dispatch the white clad men. But she could feel that she was not alone. Someone else was near to her, almost stalking her movements. How she knew, she didn't know but she could feel it in her bones.

She left the cover in the rocks and tried to run back towards the castle, to Han and Chewie, nearly running into a black clad chest and silver lined mask. A strangled scream escaped her lips and she turned again to run the opposite way, turning slightly to let off a few shots at the masked stranger. Tripping up the boulders, she tried to gain the high ground against her stalker. The man following her simply took long strides to advance on her, graceful to a fault. In his hand was a long cylindrical metal tube which she had a sinking feeling was a lightsaber. Her stomach fell to her feet as he ignited it and batted her shots away. In a last effort to repel the man, she tossed the empty blaster at his head which he easily dodged with a digitized laugh. Rey turned again to run, but it felt like all of her muscles had seized up, frozen solid. "Stop." the man said simply, almost amused. He came closer, slowly, as if toying with her, enjoying the fear rolling off her in waves. The masked man paused for a moment, regarding his quarry and sighed, as if almost tired. "Where is the droid? You ran from the direction of the Resistance, I know you've seen it. Small, round...orange..."

"I don't know what you're talking about, I haven't seen any droid." Rey replied, her voice shaking. Her eyes followed him as he circled around her immobile form. She knew from Finn's descriptions that this was none other than Kylo Ren, and that she would probably not survive this encounter anyways. Sweat rolled down into her eyes and she tried to blink it away while keeping the man in her field of vision. The snap-hiss of his saber igniting made her blood run cold, and the sudden heat of it near her neck made her light headed.

"I will not ask you again..." Kylo paused for a moment, his hand stilled near her hair. "You've seen the map...the one the droid carries. You will be just as useful."

Those words were the last that Rey heard before darkness fell over her.

Kylo caught the slight girl, her weight barely registering on his arms. But his mind was not on her weight, it was focused on how to extract the information from her. As fearful as she felt with his saber near her neck, it should be an easy task to remove the information, pass it on to General Hux, and dispose of the girl. The thought caught momentarily, certainly this was the girl who had escaped with the droid to begin with, along with the failed trooper. How could a scavenger girl from a backwater like Jakku have caused this much trouble? He narrowed his eyes at her as he entered the shuttle and his lips twitched downwards as he felt the tendrils of the Force tapping at his consciousness, coming from the unconscious girl. Force sensitive? From Jakku? Something didn't sit right with the situation. As the shuttle took off, leaving the lush green forest behind, Kylo's thoughts were tearing him in two. There were so many things that were wrong at this point, a few more shouldn't have made a ripple in the pool, but this girl (scavenger, he thought) was throwing boulders into the calm of his waters. If she was force sensitive, she could join him as his apprentice. Maybe the two of them together could make the darkness home.

Kylo shook his head forcefully, clearing the clamoring thoughts away. His emotions were getting the better of him, there was no way this was right. Another test! This would be another test from Snoke, testing his resolve and tenacity. He would gain the information from the girls mind and bring her before Snoke himself so she could be evaluated. Something still rankled in the back of his mind. The problem, he realized, was that the girl was radiating light. It was almost blinding him if he looked through the Force. It wouldn't have been that big of a problem...however, her light was calling to the remainder of his so forcefully that he thought he would break. He turned his head away from her and batted the feeling back down, crushing the burgeoning flame of the light within himself until it was a mere glowing coal again.

Kylo groaned quietly to himself and shook his head. This was going to be a serious problem.


End file.
